2017-12-27 18:30:04

I've only just started messing around with my Dot and I'm absolutely loving it.  the amount of things it can do is staggering once you figure out the sintax.  I do sometimes wish it could speak a little faster though, but hey.  It's perfectly pleasant.

2017-12-28 07:13:14

It actually surprised me when I got into it, though I will say that having a working browser with the alexa ap helped a lot.
Trying it through Ios just wasn't good, and I didn't find many skills last year at all. That combined with the fact the music options on it are pretty pathetic made me stick it on a shelf for close to a year, but hay, at least we're catching up now.

We did have a lovely time over christmas with my parents playing various trivia games, since with having to speak  you don't need to be computer literate to use it. I'm even thinking of buying some of the Echo buttons so my lady and I can play trivial pursuit and actually buz in.


Other none game related functions I find very handy is  skill called Word nurd which can give you the spelling of any word you tell it, also setting reminders is really handy since I tend to forget things (I even set a reminder so that next december the First Alexa will remind me to buy a John rutter carol collection as we missed his carols this christmas big_smile).

Apart from the music, the voice perchicing is a little patchy I find, eg, it didn't seem to be able to tell you the price or buy something if it is not actually sold by amazon. I also found that entering the four digit pass code to buy was one of the few areas wheree Nvda seemed to stumble on the page a little, so at the moment I've disabled voice purchasing so that I don't order an elephant by mistake.
it's easy enough to buy things on line once you use the correct navigation to cut through all Amazon's adds, and it's likely voice purchasing will improve in the future.

Oddly enough I don't have the same problem adding items to a shopping list, which is a function that will prove useful I think, since quite often I'm remembering halfway through the day that we need  a loaf of bread or a bottle of washing up liquid or something else extremely mundane, and then utterly forgetting it when I go shopping big_smile.

Getting back to games, my lady and I are loving the flash briefings both for the news headlines, and for the word of the day, as well as doing question of the day and jeopardy together.

@Orko, btw, I believe the problem with double jeopardy is a uk, ---- or maybe a none us thing, again hopefully it'll be fixed if the developers known about it since it'd be nice to get the full whack as we now have amazon prime.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-12-28 13:38:57 (edited by Orko 2017-12-28 13:43:43)

@Dark, I'm sure you are right about Jeopardy, consider though that the Double Jeopardy round is rather new here and instead of being a bug, simply hasn't made it yet to the UK, but it's more than likely coming.

Also you don't need a skill to ask Alexa to spell a word, you just ask, "Alexa, how do you spell xxx", and she'll tell you. Just as you don't need a calculator skill to ask Alexa a math problem.

On missing this years carols, I did pretty much the same thing. I started collecting "A Christmas Miracle" aCDs by the Children's Miracle Network, but missed the fourth year so I don't have volume 4 in my collection. Annoyed with myself for that.

2017-12-30 14:01:05

Here's a game that I just heard about on the Blind Bargains podcast. It's called Match Game, in it you play the Super Match portion of the Match Game TV show. Super Match has two parts, in the first you are given a phrase like "blank bells" and you have to fill in the blank with the most popular response. To help you out you are given three sample answers, you can use one of those or use one of your own. You earn points based on whether you pick the most, second most, or third most popular answer. The second part is similar except you are going head to head with Alexa. Again you are given a phrase with a word missing and you have to try to guess the same word Alexa thinks up. You are not given any sample answers. The games has the usual sound effects including the music from the TV show. Each week you accumulate points and if you reach 1,000 points within a week you earn a bonus. The weeks start on Saturday. There are more than likely more bonuses beyond the first one but I haven't gotten that far yet. If you miss one or more days, you can play those missed days, but only for fun, no points are offered for them.

2018-01-17 04:32:58

Just to let everyone know, the topic has had some updates with a couple of new games.
Also I've started  This topic in the offtopic room for none game related Alexa skills I've tried

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-01-17 15:13:22

didn't know if you saw this one, but there is also "The Wayne Investigation," where you play a detective in the Batman universe looking into the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Haven't played it myself so don't know how good it is.

Also, looking at your blurb about Earplay, they are planning to have pay-to-play content down the road. I hope they are still going. There hasn't been any news on their site since Early October and there were a couple titles they hoped to have released by now. Maybe they're just running late because I really want to play Orpheus and also my niece and nephew would love Pugmire.

2018-01-17 15:28:56

Hmmm, I'll check the wane investigation thing, though I confess I'm not a huge batman fan, still probably worth looking at.
Earplay I suspect will expand soon, i have an account with them and I think their games will be more fun on Alexa than on Ios owing to the better speech recognition, though whether I should edit the existing codename cygnus page or replace it with a generalised ear play one I don't know, we'll see where things go.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-01-18 23:38:20

actually, found out Earplay released something a few weeks ago called "The Holiday Party" which you access by telling Allexxa to launch Holiday party. It's a spin-off of Codename Signus and is Christmas themed. Not sure how long it is and can't play it at the moment.

They don't have it listed on the Earplay site directly and I only found out about it by slogging through the little social media posts as it isn't on the pages anywhere else. Haven't played it yet as I'm at the Mcdowell center (a rehab adult place ot learn blind skills) and don't have it on me right now.

Also, back in November they released "office hours." a game they made for the Future of Storytelling festival and you can play it. It was just a demo so it is only 10 minutes long.

Also, I should be better at giving earplay updates as I've signed up for them to give me notifications for all their worlds. So when the release Pugmire, The Orpheus Device, or another chapter to Codename Signus, You'll be sure to know. I'll take a look back every time I get some info and also sign up for other worlds if they are on display. I'll also look through the social media junk. They haven't updated their news in over 3 months, but a lot has actually been happening.

2018-01-30 09:00:19

I need to look at Ear play seriously, though it is a bit of a shame when they have a central ap that they can't run their games through it.

i have however updated the list with the last game I tried, hangman.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-01-30 15:58:11

you actually as far as I know only access office hours and half through the earplay app as far as I know. At least that seems to be the instructions the site provides.

2018-02-08 11:46:19

Okay updated list with a few new things, Rock paper scissors, my pet rock, rock paper scissors lizard spock and the very awesome bbc inspection chamber.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-24 06:05:27

Okay the games article has been updated with a couple more things such as ghost word game and lyrics idle as well  extended description for Caves under thorn hill, I also found a couple more to try so expect some more mini reviews soon both of games and other random stuff for Alexa ;D.

Btw, methinks I need to add at least some of these to the db at some point, especially the more exensive and feature rich ones like dungeon adventure, six swords etc.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-24 07:49:01

Nice. Great job Dark.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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2018-04-24 14:25:04

Okay while I was poking around  the skills section I noticed a few more games to have a bash at, so have  added in categories plus, say boom and song quiz.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-26 12:20:28

Okay sorry about the extra post here but I had a rather amusing phone call last night which I thought I'd relate as its relevant to this topic.

the Hangman skill hasn't worked for ages so I reported to Amazon. I got a suggestion back of disabling and reenabling the skill which I tried, as well as unplugging the echo dot and plugging it in again. No luck.

I then of all things got a phone call from Amazon customer service Uk which surprised me.
Actually at first I probably scared the poor fellow on the phone by sounding suspicious since I thought it might be those dreaded fake microsoft scammers back again big_smile.

We had a rather confusing chat, but the upshot of it is that the Hangman skill I tried seems to have been discontinued, but there are at least two other skills called "hangman" on there, one of which I'll be trying out.
The chap also noticed that I had an unusually long list of skills I tried and when I explained that it was because I'm a reviewer for audiogames.net he was sort of interested, I even sent him a link to the big list of reviews.

I was actually vaguely impressed at the fact Amazon thought to ring someone over a problem with a skill. I can't imagine Apple or another service, the chap also actually knew what he was talking about which was helpful.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-27 23:43:41

Okay just added Minny dungeon to the list. A very short Cyoa game, but one which is better than most of this type.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-29 14:18:14

Added two more games, Dungeon raider (not as good as minny dungeon), and Dark citadel, a really awesome sounding game but one with maaaaaaajor bugs.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-05-10 14:50:18

Hi all. I also recommand my farm. It is a farming skill. You can buy annimals, feed them, collect eggs, milk the cows etc. The devs are working improving so you can give it a try.

2018-05-10 22:43:13

Hey, Dark.
Here is two more games to add in the list.
The Oregon Trail game.
Wizard Adventures.

2018-05-11 03:21:37

@Bogdan, I'll give the farm one a go.

@Cyco annoyingly neither the oregan trail nor wizard adventures seems to be in the Uk ap store so I can't try them, which is really annoying given that I've always fancied playing oregan trail.

This is actually one thing I really hate about Alexa, that either Amazon themselves or American skill authors forget that there are actually more countries in the world than just the Usa, I had the same problem with dungeon crawler unfortunately which hasn't yet been fixed.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-05-11 14:16:00

Hi. Sorry but I forgot to post about another skill in my last post. A good audio adventure is RunEscape. You are a detective in the medieval period and you need to discover who is the author of an horrible crime. The action is in a monastery and the sisters will guide you solving the mistery. I completed it and it is a good skill. Sounds and voice acting are great.

2018-05-12 04:54:53

Hello @dark

Would you like me to create you an Amazon US account so you can try any of these skills we exclusively have?

If so, please feel free to private message me the email address you would like to use with it. I will keep a look out for your message.

Awhile back, I helped out a guy in Germany who wanted a US Amazon account,for the same reasons.

2018-05-12 17:12:44

Hello. For Harry Potter fans, I find two skills. Harry Potter trivia and Harry potter letters.

2018-05-13 11:13:20

I've already got Harry potter trivia listed in the article.
I've now added my farm as well.

I've seen the runescape skill, but I wasn't sure how familiar you need to be with the actual graphical runescape rpg for it to make sense to you.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-05-14 00:42:23

Okay now addded music quiz and harry potter letters. Actually Hp letters is really rather cool.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)